Parents are ‘endangering children’s lives’ as they park up ‘as close as possible’ to Birmingham schools, police officers have stressed.
We spent an hour behind the scenes at Operation Snap, the police initiative to educate and prosecute bad driving, as they dealt with dashcam sent in from across the region.
The officers revealed they had been sent dashcam from primary schools across Birmingham, with parents caught on camera parking on yellow zig zags.
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Sgt Steve Evans told BirminghamLive: “We get footage from primary schools in the Birmingham area. Parents obviously dropping off their children, parking on the yellow zigzags outside the schools where it’s obviously a keep clear area.
“To me that is a dangerous position outside the school because you are endangering children on their journey to and from school.”
In a behind-the-scenes visit at Op Snap this month, Sgt Evans said road safety outside schools is a priority to ‘improve’ upon across the region.
For anyone caught parking in such a dangerous position, police reviewing the dashcam footage have three options:
Sgt Stephen Evans reviews public dashcam footage to check for driving offences and send out notices of prosecution as appropriate -Credit:Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live
He added: “It’s not just drop off time but also pick up times, so twice a day these vehicles are doing that.
“Some parents are walking their children to school and abiding by the signs, some unfortunately are ignoring the road markings and parking on yellow zig zags. Parents like to get as close to the school as possible.
To submit footage to the team, click here.
“But parking there is a safety concern, especially for the children. We try to encourage children and parents to walk to school. Safety outside school is what we are trying to improve.”
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Operation Snap – which now receives around 80 submissions a day – also look out for dangerous driving, using a mobile phone while driving, not wearing a seatbelt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, using a trailer in lane three of a motorway, crossing solid white lines and other offences where a “driver is clearly not in proper control of a vehicle.”